It is often necessary to suspend one or more flat screen displays from a ceiling for purposes of showing TV programs, movies, sports, schedules, scoring, or any other type of entertainment or information which can be displayed on such devices. These displays can often be found in restaurants, bars, airports, hotels, sports arenas, bowling centers, or other public venues. A conventional mounting system, ceiling mount 10 is show in FIG. 1. The traditional way of mounting a display component 18 is to use a rigid pole 14 as shown in FIG. 1. One end of the pole 14 is attached to the ceiling using a mounting plate 12, and the other end of the pole 14 is attached to a swivel plate 16 which is fastened to the display component 18 using four fasteners to attach the swivel plate 16 to a Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) standard mounting interface 17. The spacing of the fastener locations is defined by the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) Flat Display Mounting Interface standard (described below).
The Flat Display Mounting Interface is a standard developed by VESA which specifies the spacing of mounting holes on the back of a flat panel display. The spacing of these mounting holes varies from a square of 75 mm×75 mm for very small displays to a rectangular spacing of 800 mm×400 mm for very large displays. Virtually all mounts designed to attach a display to a wall, ceiling, floor or desk stand employ metric fasteners which fasten the mount to the display component using the VESA mounting holes.